


Wishing Lamp

by aba_daba_do



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Magic Lamp, Prompt Fic, wishing gone wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 02:55:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17014269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aba_daba_do/pseuds/aba_daba_do
Summary: Requested by harelyoctubre on InstagramAfter returning home for the school year, Dipper and Mabel find a magic lamp and decide to wish Bill Cipher out of existence.





	Wishing Lamp

Mabel rolled onto her back on the couch, hair falling over the cushions. “I’m so bored!” She looked over at Dipper, pen stuck between his teeth as he mulled over his history textbook. He laid flat out on his stomach, spread out across the floor of the living room. “I mean, you’re doing homework on a Saturday afternoon!”

Returning home from Gravity Falls had taken some adjustment. What went from a wild summer of monster hunts and near-death-experiences, daily life seemed like, well, daily life. Their days moved in a particular routine: wake up, go to school, do homework, eat dinner, go to bed. The weekends were the only thing that provided some kind of stimulation. They would set out into the town in hopes of finding a warlock or maybe Bigfoot, but always came home with disappointment and the blank pages of a journal.

“There’s gotta be something,” Mabel continued, reaching over the arm of the couch to scratch Waddles behind the ears. “Some kind of sinkhole or maybe a haunted house that people keep moving into for no good reason.”

Dipper didn’t look up from his homework. He pushed the brim of Wendy’s (now his) hunter’s hat out of his eyes. “This is just how things are now, Mabel. This isn’t Gravity Falls, this is regular life. It beats surviving Weirdmaggedon or fighting Bill.”

She huffed, “Yuck. I might be permanently messed up from that.” Then she slipped off the couch and sprawled out beside him. “But you gotta admit, it’s been a little boring since.”

Dipper sighed and finally looked over from the textbook. “Yeah…” He bit down on the pen one more time before pulling out from between his teeth. Slamming the textbook shut, he turned to her, “Let’s go do something. Anything! Who needs the supernatural?”

Mabel bolted upright. “Yeah! We have each other and that’s all we need!” They fist bumped each other and rushed for the door. Mabel shouted over her shoulder at they left, “Bye, Mom! We’re gonna go play outside!”

 

\-----

 

“Nevermind, I’m bored again,” Mabel said as she hopped over every crack in the sidewalk. “There’s just nothing to do here.”

“Maybe we’re not looking hard enough,” Dipper replied, looking at the same row of houses for the fourth time. They had explored just about every nook and cranny of their neighborhood. Dipper even started to memorize the houses he passed on the way. Brick house. Yellow house. Brown house…

“Let’s face it, bro-mato. Gravity Falls was as good as it got.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He gave a defeated sigh.

A voice cut through the empty neighborhood street. “Garage sale!” A man called from the driveway of a house at the end of the street. “It’s a sale but it happens from inside a garage!”

Dipper squinted at the house, he could have sworn it wasn’t there. Brick house. Yellow house. Brown house. Blue house? That didn’t seem right. “I don’t remember that house being there.”

Mabel rubbed her hands together, “Oh boy! A garage sale! It’s a wonderland of things you don’t need but can’t reject your materialistic desire to buy them at a reasonable price!” She bolted off into the stranger’s garage, Dipper following in a panicked pursuit.

She perused the tables lined with different whatchamacallits and doodads. The air smelled like dusty cardboard and old people. It made Dipper’s mouth taste dry. “Ooo!” Mabel cooed, pointing across the garage. “Is that a knickknack of a non-specific child performing a completely mindless task!” She ran over towards it.

“Come on, garage sales are just full of worthless junk that other people pawn off on complete suckers.” He picked up a metal rod with a variety of springs shooting out the sides. “I don’t even know what most of it is.”

“Worthless junk,” the man running the sale scoffed. He rose from his chair, adjusting his fanny pack and visor. “These are incredibly valuable items, I’ll have you know!”

“Wow!” Mabel exclaimed from one of the tables, “this Magic 8 Ball only gives you passive aggressive answers!” She shook the ball and peered down into it. “‘I’d tell you to ask again later but I know you won’t remember.’ The ball is right! I won’t remember!” Dipper pointed to her with little enthusiasm, just to prove is point to the seller.

“Oh and what kind of rare items would you be interested in, kid?” the seller countered, leaning in uncomfortably close.  

Dipper chuckled to himself and leaned against one of the the tables. “I don’t think you could sell anything here that would catch my eye. My sister and I have seen some pretty weird stuff.” The table slipped out from underneath him, nearly knocking him to the ground.

The seller tapped a finger against his chin, “Alright. I got just the thing for you.” He turned and rooted through one of the cardboard boxes labeled HOUSEWARE. Mabel veered over to Dipper’s side, watching with intent. “This is a wishing lamp. Rub it and you get three wishes.” It thumped against the table with a satisfaction.

Mabel blinked, “This is a desk lamp?” It was an unremarkable thing. A black little lamp with a rounded cone on the top and a fraying cord.

“Yeah,” Dipper added. “Aren’t wishing lamps supposed to be really old oil lamps or something?”

“Or maybe a lava lamp!” Mabel continued. “Then I could use my wish to finally get the lava out of the lamp. I’ve always wanted to eat it.”

The seller pulled at his thinning hair and stifled a scream. “This-- er-- I-- Not everything has to be like it is in the movies! Genies don’t have to pop out of ancient lamps and sing a song about friendship! Sometimes lamps just grant wishes. Just like a magic vacuum cleaner or plastic sporks!”

The twins shared a side glance. “Uh-huh,” Dipper said. He whispered to Mabel a bit too loudly, “Maybe we should get out of here?”

“You don’t believe me,” the seller shouted. He reached into his fanny pack and produced a thing white business card. “I’m a magical item salesman from dimension 43:-! I travel around in my multi-dimensional garage sale, selling and buying items of interest. I go where the business goes.”  Dipper took the card as Mabel read over his shoulder:

 

JOHHN JONES

CERTIFIED APPRAISER, BUYER, & SELLER

YOUR TRASH IS STILL TRASH, I’LL JUST SELL IT

CALL: ↫▇◒◱✸┤▲

 

“Wow! They spell John with two h’s in your dimension!” Mabel said.

Dipper crammed the card in his vest pocket. “I don’t get it. Why are you trying so hard to sell us a magic lamp? Is it haunted? Cursed? If I touch it will it melt my face off?”

“What? No! I already used my three wishes. I’m just trying to clear out the inventory.”

“What’d you wish for?” Mabel asked.

Johhn shrugged. “The basics. I brought peace to my home dimension. Cured all ailments. And I re-opened my favorite ice cream shop. The banana splits from dimension 133&~ are the best in the whole multiverse.”

Dipper took a step back, trying to separate himself from the interdimensional salesman.“No way. I’m not falling for it! You’re a con-man just like everyone else!”

Johhn leaned over and whispered into Mabel’s ear. “Is your brother usually this sweaty and nervous?”

“Yeah.” She tapped her fingers together awkwardly. “We sort of had a little incident over the summer with a demon. He possessed Dipper one time and then caused the apocalypse. It’s kind of messed up.”

“Yeesh. Well it sounds like you really need this lamp.” He tapped on its base twice. “What if I told you this thing could make everything better. Just rub your hand on it and poof! You kids could lead relaxed, less sweaty lives.” Johhn picked up the lamp and tossed it into Dipper’s arms, catching him momentarily off guard. “Here, how about I just give it to you kids? On the house. Use it or don’t. Makes no difference to me.”  

Dipper looked down at the supposedly magic desk lamp in his arms, “Why should I trust you?”

John unzipped his fanny back and pulled out a piece of paper folded into a palm-sized square. He unfolded it over and over, revealing the paper to be at least 4 feet tall, words scrolling down in uniform print. “Because I have this contract agreeing that I would never intentionally do you harm, but if any item I sell  you has ill-intended effects or you use it for a purpose it isn’t intended for, it’s on you. So if you say, accidentally erase yourselves from the timeline, you can’t blame me. Or if you plug it into a surge protector and it sparks up-- wall sockets only, kids.” He laid the contract out on the table, “Take care with signing, you’ll wait.”

Dipper looked over the enormous document, “I don’t know... “

“I’ll sign it!” Mabel screamed, pulling out an emergency glitter pen from her sweater sleeve. “I’m wishing for a Duo-corn! A unicorn with two heads!” She rushed to sign her name on the bottom of the page.

Dipper’s eyes switched between the document and the lamp. He sighed, “Fine… I’ll sign it.”  He took the glitter pen from Mabel and carefully printed his name next to hers.

“Good.” Johhn took the contact from them and crammed it back into his fanny pack. “Well, it was nice doing business with you. But I gotta scram. Later.” He gave them a quick finger guns, and then in a blink of an eye, he disappeared.

The house on the end of the street ceased to exist. And the twins were left with a lamp.

 

\------

 

The lamp sat on the desk between the twins. Dipper clicked the pen over and over in his hands, crouched over his new journal. A pro/con list etched itself into the fresh page.

 

PROS: no more apocalypse, world peace, find true love, get superpowers, eat icecream for every meal and never get sick (this one is Mabel’s)

CONS: potentially alter the timeline beyond repair, stop existing, genie eats face off, accidentally start another world war, get tired of eating ice cream (this one is also Mabel’s)

 

He leaned back in his desk chair and sighed, “I just don’t trust it. The risks are too high.”

Mabel sat on his bed, Waddles curled into her lap. He oinked and nuzzled himself against her. “You’re thinking too hard about this, bro. I think that Johhn guy isn’t trying to trick us into anything. I really think he wanted to help.”

Taking off his hat, Dipper tossed it onto the desk and ran his fingers through his hair. Why would some random salesman from another dimension show up in their neighborhood with the intention of “helping” them? It just didn’t sit right with him. Any time he closed his eyes, he could still imagine the stark lesson of his summer flashing before him. Trust no one. Or well, trust the people you love. Everyone else is probably out to kill you. “I just don’t believe that,” he replied.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out.” Mabel nudged Waddles off of her lap, slamming her hand onto the base of the lamp, rubbing in rushed circles.

“Mabel! No!” Dipper shouted, but she was already declaring her wish.

“I wish I had a peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, and sprinkles sandwich!” The lamp quivered beneath her fingers, the lightbulb inside flickering on and off before sending a burst of bright white light into the bedroom.

Dipper blinked, and looked down to find the sandwich sitting on a plate. “Woah, it worked.”

Mabel lifted it off the plate, “And it’s cut in half! I didn’t even wish for that part. This magic lamp knows everything.” She looked at it, and without hesitation, took a bite.

Dipper winced, watching her attempt to chew between the sticky peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. The sprinkles crunched loudly in her mouth. “Do you feel sick? Poisoned? Is it crunchy or smooth peanut butter?”

She swallowed. Her eyes lit up, “This is the most amazing sandwich ever. But I probably should have wished for a glass of milk too…” she reached over for the lamp, but Dipper swiped it out of the way.

“Don’t waste our other wishes!” He paused, looking down at the lamp. “You really don’t think this lamp is evil?”

“Nope.” She took another bite of the sandwich and spoke between bites. “Listen, I know you’re nervous and stuff. But I really do think this lamp can help us. Your life would be like a bajillion times easier if Bill was never apart of it. Think about it, if Bill never existed, there would be no magic portal for Grunkle Ford to get sucked into. Which means he and Stan would have probably made up, right? Which means we would get to spend the summer with our two amazing Grunkles, not fighting for our lives. Heck, we probably would have spent way more summers with them. And you would stop freaking out all the time anything even remotely scary happens and maybe stop having those nightmares or whatever.” She finished off the rest of the sandwich, licking the excess peanut butter off her fingers. “Everyone else’s lives would probably be better too if not for Bill. Everyone who ever lived in Gravity Falls.”

Dipper could feel his heart hammering in his chest, the slight residue of pain it left behind. Erasing Bill from history could mean saving countless other people from his trauma. History could look completely different: the pyramids wouldn’t exist, George Washington would have probably been president for another 8 years, the Illuminati wouldn’t have been founded. And yet, everyone who ever fell prey to Bill would be spared.

He nodded, placing the lamp down on the desk. “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s wish Bill out of existence.”

“Alright!” Mabel leapt off the bed beside him. Placing her hand on the base of the lamp, she smiled at him with determination. “Let’s save Gravity Falls!”

He placed his hand next to hers. He closed his eyes, rubbing his hand in circles, occasionally bashing his fingers against Mabel’s but not stopping. And he uttered the words so low under his breath the felt nearly inaudible. “We wish Bill Cipher never existed.”

The lamp flickered, flashing pulses of blinding light out into the open air. The base rattled, becoming hot to the touch. And then it stopped. All in an instant.

Dipper blinked a few times, looking around his bedroom. Everything seemed to be close enough to the same. He looked to Mabel, who was closely examining herself for any changes.

“I feel the same. Do you?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He ran to his bookshelf, pulling down a book titled _The 6 Wonders of the World In Excruciating Detail_. He flipped through. No Pyramids. It was as if they never existed. “I think we did it!”

Mabel grinned and jumped in the air. “Yes!

“I can’t believe it! We altered reality! We saved Gravity Falls!”

“This is amazing,” she replied. “I need to tell Waddles!” She poked her head around the bedroom, her pig seeming to have run off. “Waddles? Waddles? Where’d you go?”

Dipper laughed, grabbing his pen off his desk. “This is incredible. I need to write all of this down! I wonder what else will be different about the world now.” He turned to grab his journal, but couldn’t find it anywhere on his desk. “Huh? That’s weird.”

“Waddles? Waddles?” Mabel shouted up and down the hallway, but no loyal pig came to her side.

Dipper felt the breath go stale in his lungs. His journal was missing and so was Waddles. He turned to grab Wendy’s hat off the desk, but instead he found his old brown cap the one with the star on it he swore he lost during their first encounter with the gnomes. He looked over to Mabel, standing helplessly in the doorway. “Uhhh, Mabel? I think we may have just done a really bad thing. In this reality, I don’t think we spend the summer in Gravity Falls.”

Mabel shook her head and forced a smile. “What? No way… Bill or not… Stan and Ford are still our Grunkles. We would have spent the summer with them no matter what.” She clenched her hands to hide the tremble. “Let’s just call Stan and Ford. They should be on the Stan O’ War right now, having a really good time.”

 

\------

Mabel hit dial on her cell phone and waited. Dipper leaned over her shoulder, “And you’re sure Stan knows how to use a cell phone?”

“Positive. I taught him before we left.”

“Mabel, he can barely work a computer, let alone something with a touch screen.”

The dial tone echoed between them before cutting into a cold automated voice. _The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected. Please--_ Dipper hung up before they could hear the rest.

Mabel shook her head, and immediately went to scroll through her contacts list. “Okay, so maybe he broke it or something. He’s an old, confused guy. Let’s just call the Shack. Soos will pick up and we’ll find out exactly what happened and it will all be fine.” She clicked dial again, the screen sending a blue haze on her face.

The phone rung, a pierce in their ears until. “Hello, this is Stanford Pines?”

“Grunkle Ford!” Mabel chimed into the phone. “What are you doing home? Aren’t you supposed to be on the boat?”

“I’m sorry, who is this? What are you talking about?”

Dipper watched Mabel break in disbelief. “Grunkle Ford, it’s Mabel and Dipper. Your great niece and nephew?”

“Ahh yes, Shermie’s grandkids… how did you get this number?”

She chuckled, but her breath started to rise. “Come on, stop kidding around. Is this Stan? Are you messing with us?”

“If you’re calling about my brother I regret to inform you that he’s been dead for 20 years. Now can I ask specifically why you children are calling? Is there some family emergency I should know about? I’m a very busy man and I don’t have time for your games.”

Dipper grabbed the phone out from under Mabel and hung up. The tears bubbled up out of her eyes as she sniffled. “I don’t get it. They should have made up! Why didn’t they make up?”

He struggled to find the words, but was fighting off the need to cry himself. “I don’t know. Without Bill, Stan and Ford don’t have that fight but they also don’t make up. And without Stan, there is no Mystery Shack. Ford must have turned it into a laboratory and probably wouldn’t want kids running around it all summer.” He bit down on his thumb nail, trying to think through the problem. “But we still have our real memories, probably because we were the people who made the wish.”

Mabel broke into a sob, a sudden crash in her body. “We killed Grunkle Stan!”

Dipper braced her by the shoulders. “No we didn’t! We just have to get the lamp and set everything back the way it was.” She nodded and followed him back into his bedroom, but when they arrived, the lamp had disappeared too. Dipper skid to a halt. “No. No. No! This can’t be happening!” He scoured every available corner of the room, underneath everything. There had to be some explanation, right? Maybe their cat knocked it over? Or maybe their mom had taken it thinking it was trash? But he had to accept the fact none of that was true. He dropped onto his bed, face buried in his hands. He stifled a sob as Mabel came and sat down next to him.

“Where could it have gone,” she muttered, tossing her phone onto the bed. “Maybe we’re being stupid. Stan fakes his death all the time. He could be fine.”

Dipper paused, “How do we know that?”

Mabel pressed her head against his shoulder. “You were right. We shouldn’t have trusted Johhn or used that lamp.”

His head popped up. “Wait. Johhn said he went wherever the business was, right? Without Bill, we have no reason for a magic wishing lamp let alone any connection to the supernatural. Johhn wouldn't have come here to set up shop and give us that lamp! It’s a paradox!”

  
“That means the Time Paradox Removal Squadron will come and fix this, right? Blendin will show up any minute and yell in that high pitched voice that we did something stupid.”

  
“I doubt it. We didn’t mess with time, we just made a dumb wish. And if we never went to Gravity Falls, I doubt Blendin has any idea who we are.”

  
Patting at the back of her eyes with her sweater, Mabel sat up straight with resolve. “Then we have to find Johhn and get that lamp back.”

  
“How do we do that?”

  
“Wait a second, do you still have that business card he gave us?” Dipper shoved his hand into his pocket, pulling out a slightly crushed business card. “Yes! Because we had it with us it wasn’t affected by the paradox. We just need to call that number and get Johhn back here.”

Dipper bit down on his bottom lip. “But how to we call someone who lives in a different dimension?”

  
“You’re the nerdy-pants! You tell me!”

  
He looked over at her phone on the bed. “I have an idea…”

 

\------

 

The surge protectors and extension cords ran around the house like a pit of snakes. They told their mom they were simply trying to make a planetarium upstairs (and being creative and curious children she believed them). Dipper pulled all of them up to Mabel’s phone charger. Opening an interdimensional portal took literal toxic waste to power, but making a phone call should take no more than a house.

He switched his eyes between her phone and their dad’s laptop, _Coding For Idiots_ opened up beside him. Mabel plugged the last of the extension cords into the surge protector and huffed out a heavy breath. “I think that’s every outlet in the house. I had to steal some cords from the neighbor’s garage.”

“They’ll never notice.”

“Someone will notice if the house goes up in flames.”

“But if if this works, the timeline will reset and none of this will matter.” He paused, “And if it doesn’t then I take the blame and get sent to some correction facility for kids. But we have to try.” He typed a few more things into the laptop before unhooking Mabel’s phone and tossing it to her. “So I hacked into your phone and changed the numbering system to mimic the one Johhn’s dimension has. I’m assuming his phone is magic, like everything else in the shop. So that when we give our phone excess power that magic phone number activates.”

“Or blow my phone up.”

“I’m doing my best, okay? It’s not like I can hack into satellites to blast a message out into space.” He spun the desk chair around, “Now enter the number into your phone.”

Mabel nodded, tapping at each symbol (Dipper really had been able to hack into her phone with ease) until she had it. Dipper reached down and pulled the charger plug up and pulled a metal baking sheet off the desk. “Okay, now put the phone on the baking sheet. It will probably get super hot so we don’t want it touching us or anything flammable.” She did as he asked. He turned, lining up the plug with the charging port. “Alright, now at the same time, I plug it in and you hit ‘call’.”

She nodded. “I really hope you don’t kill us.”

He ignored that. “One. Two. Three.” Simultaneously, he plugged the phone in as Mabel called the number. The phone began to spark and zap immediately, sending an arch of electricity against Dipper’s fingers. He winced and pulled away. As the phone rang, the lights in the house surged, light bulbs splitting open and wires frying inside the walls. Mabel crouched down by his side, trying to ignore the wheeze of the house and focus just on the phone.

The ringing came to a halt. “This is Johhn Jones. Certified appraiser, buyer, and seller of magic and interdimensional items. How may I help you?”

“Johhn!” Mabel shouted over the screech of the electricity. “This is Mabel and Dipper! We need your help!”

“Who?”

The phone squealed under the pressure, screen glitching and plastic case melting off.

“You sold us a magic desk lamp but we altered reality! You don’t remember us anymore!”

“Huh. Well that’s interesting.”

“Please come help!” Mabel cried.

The phone cut out and caught fire. The whole house went dark. The air smelled like melted plastic and smoke. Dipper and Mabel coughed, standing upright in the mess of sparking surge protectors and wires. Their mother shouted from the bottom of the stairs, “Dipper? Mabel? What have you done?”

Mabel stared at Dipper with a hapless and helpless expression. “Oh no. What are we going to do?”

“I-I don’t know--” The bedroom disappeared from around them in a blink, opening up to a trashy garage sale in a house they now recognized.

Johhn stood behind his table, lips pursed in anger. “Care to explain why I’m getting a call from two random kids in dimension 47’/ who seem to have set their house on fire?”

Dipper and Mabel both let their breath go, hearts still ramming in their chests. Mabel unclenched the business card from in between her fingers and held it out to him. “We got a magic desk lamp from you earlier today. We tried to wish an evil demon out of existence, but in doing so we altered the timeline too much and probably made everything worse, to the point where you never sold it to us.”

“Uh-huh? Whelp, these things happen sometimes.” He turned and walked away into the vast isles of foldable tables.

“Aren’t you going to help us?” Mabel asked.

He shrugged, “When I sold it to you, I made you sign a contract saying I wasn’t responsible for anything irresponsible you did with it.”

“But you’re the one who said we could use it to make things better! This was your idea!” Dipper shouted.

Johhn took little interest in this, producing a pen and notepad from his fanny pack to take inventory of the items. “I doubt I would have explicitly told you to erase a demon from existence. I’ve been around the block with this stuff before, kid, and I would never do anything so incriminating.”

Mabel huffed out a sigh. “He’s right. He never actually said we should use it to get rid of Bill. Just that the lamp could make things better. Not like he would remember anything that happened.”

A grin spread across Dipper’s face as he felt an idea form. “Yeah. Because he never said anything like that at all.”

Johhn turned around, ceasing his inventory take. “Excuse me?”

Dipper chuckled, taking a few steps closer to Johhn. “Don’t play dumb with me. I’ve dealt with con-men like you before. I know all your tricks and loopholes but you can’t get around this one. In this reality, you never gave us the lamp. We never signed a contract. We have memories of those things, but they didn’t actually happen. Which means as the owner of the wishing lamp you are directly responsible for all it’s repercussions.”

“Yeah,” Mabel said, joining in with Dipper. “And it’s not like you would hold up in interdimensional court against two sweet kids just trying to do the right thing for their home dimension. We can’t even legally sign contracts.”

The twins stared the salesman down, mischievous grins pulling across their faces. Johhn glared back for a few seconds before breaking. “Augh! You kids are good. Fine, I’ll fix the reality thing for you. But I’d better not see you in court.” He rooted through the boxes, eventually pulling out the same familiar desk lamp. He tossed it over to them, Dipper catching in out of the air. “Now make your wish and get out of my hair.”

Dipper held up the lamp between them, its presence more comforting than it had ever been before. Mabel leaned in next to him, placing her hand on the lamp. “Let’s fix this and go home.” Dipper nodded and placed his hand next to hers.

And together, they made a wish.

 

\-----

Mabel kicked her legs up and down on the couch, speaking idly into the phone. “And that’s how we learned not to mess with the past. Sometimes things happen for a reason, good or bad. Also not to buy things from a guy named Johhn Jones.”

There was a pause on the other side of the line. “Uh-huh?” Stan said, drawn out with confusion.

Reaching down Mabel scratched between Waddle’s ears. “You would have understood it if you were there.”

The sound on the other line clattered as Ford clearly took the phone from Stan. “I can’t believe you two found a wishing lamp. Those things are really hard to come by! Please, send us all of your notes. I can’t wait to get my hands on that thing.”

Dipper leaned up from the ground and called into the phone, pushing up the brim of Wendy’s hat. “I’ll text you a photo when I’m done!” His journal laid spread out on the ground next to the wishing lamp. The delicate sketches of the lamp and the interdimensional salesman lined the fresh pages along with chunks of finely printed notes.

“Text me a photo?” Ford asked.

Mabel laughed and rolled her eyes. “Grunkle Stan, will you please teach Grunkle Ford how to use a cellphone?”

“You got it, kiddo,” Stan chuckled.

Ford cleared his throat. “Well, either way, I’m very proud of you two for being so clever. You’re true adventurers! Before we know it, you’ll both be uncovering new and fantastic mysteries.”

“And you’ve got the Pines Family knack for conning people,” Stan added.

Mabel rolled onto her back, adjusting the phone as to not get tangled with her hair. “Well, I should let you two scallywags get back to sailing on the open ocean. Don’t forget to send presents!”

“We won’t. Talk to ya real soon, kids!” Stan called into the phone as Ford’s goodbye echoed behind him. Dipper and Mabel both wished their goodbyes before hanging up the phone.

“Phew. Glad that’s over,” Mabel said as Waddles hopped up onto the couch and snuggled up beside her. “I’m really happy things are so boring. It means everything is alright.”

“Me too,” Dipper said. He finished up the set of notes he was working on and closed his journal, face reflected in the gold pine tree set into the blue leather. He looked over at the lamp. “But you know, we do still have two wishes left. And the lamp isn’t actually evil…”

“Are you saying we should use them?”

“I don’t see why not. I just wouldn’t know what to use them on.”  

“Hmmmm,” Mabel tapped a finger against her bottom lip. “I have an idea!” She picked the lamp up off the floor and held it up.

“Are you gonna tell me what it is?”

“Nope. It’s a secret.” She rubbed the lamp and whispered her secret into it. The light bulb flickered and squealed making a bright flash of light appear.

Dipper looked down in front of him where a bowl of ice cream had appeared before him. “A banana split? Really?”

Mabel dropped down onto the floor next to him, banana split in one hand and spoon in the other. “Johhn said that the best banana splits in the whole multiverse came from his home dimension. I wanna see if he’s right. And besides, it’s not like we should use the lamp to make any more world changing wishes.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

She held up her spoon to him, and they clanked them together. They dug into their banana splits, and while they couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, but they were definitely the best banana splits in the whole multiverse. Waddles buried his snout into his, oinking with glee.

“So,” Mabel shoveled another spoonful into her mouth, “one more wish. It’s all yours.”

Dipper looked at the lamp and then at his sister, ice cream smeared across her mouth. He laughed. “I can’t think of anything better to wish for than this.”


End file.
